http://aplaorg.org/about/prize/

The preliminary program is available: here

Make your travel plans — we hope to see you at a session, on a tour, at a reception, or in a workshop.  We also are looking forward to conversations started after bumping into you in the hallways, at restaurants, and in line at the coffee stand!

Complete information at http://www.aesonline.org

A) Methodological and Ethical Issues in Ethnographic Research on Conflict and Violence, led by Carolyn Nordstrom (U of Notre Dame) and Sally Engle Merry (NYU) (subsidy available)

B) Managing Careers, Balancing Personal Life, led by Andrew Buckser (Purdue U) (subsidy available)

C) Conflict and New Media, facilitators TBA (subsidy available)

We also are offering a workshop at the spring meetings called “Grant Proposal Writing for Recent PhDs,” facilitators TBA (no subsidy for this one!). Info on how to register is forthcoming.

Check aesonline.org for recent updates!

From the events of September 11 to the war in Iraq, from the Arab spring to Greek riots, from the invasion of Afghanistan to the occupation of Wall Street, the opening of the new millennium has witnessed a burst of new forms of conflict around the world. For anthropologists, these events have raised profound questions both about the nature of human conflict and about the place of our discipline within it. How should anthropologists understand the new forms of conflict that increasingly dominate the world stage? In what ways do we need to rethink our accustomed notions of power, of nation, of technology, and of the relationship between individual and group? And how do we situate ourselves, scientifically and morally, amid the contending groups whose cultures we study?

In April of 2013, the American Ethnological Society and the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology will explore these questions at our joint Spring Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.  We look forward to special plenaries by Susan Coutin, Sally Merry, Katherine Verdery, and Carolyn Nordstrom.

We invite proposals for papers, panels, workshops, and special events that interrogate the place of conflict in anthropological thought and practice. Possible subjects might include, but are not limited to:

• Anthropologists in conflict zones
• Meanings of power in the contemporary world
• The ethics of anthropological engagement with military authorities
• Law and violence
• The meanings of protest on the international stage
• Practices of conflict resolution, repair, and reconciliation
• The changing role of the nation-state
• Religion and power in contemporary conflicts
• The role of the legal process in times of conflict
• Conflict and the surveillance state
• Changing understandings of religious fundamentalism
• Anthropological ethics in a time of violence
• The role and influence of diaspora populations in conflict
• Ethnography of specific conflict arenas  – e.g., the Occupy movement, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, the Arab Spring, the European austerity revolts, the War on Terror, the Tea Party movement

As always, paper and panel proposals on topics unrelated to the meetings theme are also welcome.

Proposals for workshops and special events should be submitted through the online portal by February 1, 2013. Proposals for panels and individual papers should be submitted through the online portal by February 15, 2013.

To Register for the Conference

Submit a Paper, Panel, Workshop or Special Event:  (Note: you must first register for the conference; registration fee refunds will be provided if your proposal is not accepted)

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Hotel information: The conference will be held at the Doubletree by Hilton Chicago – Magnificent Mile, 300 East Ohio St., Chicago, Illinois 60611. (312)787-6100. Conference Registrants receive a special rate of $159 per night for single, double, or triple occupancy. All rooms include high-speed Internet access for no additional charge.

For more information, please see the AES and APLA websites, or contact Program Chair Andrew Buckser at buckser@purdue.edu or the APLA representatives, Kimberley Coles and Elizabeth Mertz (kimberley_coles at redlands.edu and eemertz at wisc.edu)

The panels are designed to be as interactive as possible, with ample time for Q&A between attendees and our distinguished panelists.  Attendance is free and open, but requires sending an RSVP to aplagradworkshops@gmail.com by the day before the panel will take place.

** APLA Panel for New Ph.D.s: LAUNCHING A CAREER IN ACADEMIA  Friday, November 16, 2012, 12:15 – 1:30 PM

** APLA & NAPA Panel for New Ph.D.s: PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY IN POLITICAL AND LEGAL CAREERS  Saturday, November 17, 2012, 6:15 – 7:30 PM

Featuring

CATHERINE BESTEMAN

(Colby College)

Saturday, November 17

12:15 to 1:30

All are welcome to join us for coffee and conversation at the APLA business meeting. We will award our student paper prize, conduct some additional APLA business, and will feature Catherine Besteman leading an informal discussion of the following questions:

• What forms can public anthropology take in the current political landscape?
• How can anthropology respond to public anxiety?
• What alternatives can anthropology suggest?

Rachel Dotson (Indiana University): Citizen-Auditors and Visible Subjects: Mi Familia Progresa and Transparency Politics in Guatemala

In this article I analyze the politics of transparency in Guatemala in relation to Mi Familia Progresa, a state social program based on the conditional cash transfer model of poverty alleviation. I argue that concepts of transparency and audit that permeate national-level political discourse in Guatemala work to create dual classes of citizens: taxpayers, who have the right and responsibility to audit social programs, and recipients of state benefits, who are viewed as legitimate objects of public scrutiny. Through combined analysis of political discourse and ethnographic research on Mi Familia Progresa in the Guatemalan highlands, this article provides a view into how the terms of these emerging forms citizenship are being negotiated and with what results for those Guatemalans who rely on Mi Familia Progresa to meet their day-to-day needs. I conclude that efforts to make state social programs transparent, while often portrayed as empowering and democratic, actually work to reinforce long-standing forms of exclusionary citizenship, and at the same time obscure critical questions such as whether social programs are addressing issues of poverty and inequality.

Honorable Mention:
Eli Elinoff (University of California, San Diego): “Sufficient” Citizens: The Cultural Politics of Sustainability and the Redistribution of the Sensible in Northeastern Thailand

The Baan Mankong “stable housing” project links poor communities with academics, government officials, architects, NGOs and other poor communities in the aim of improving urban housing, city infrastructure, and transforming the political position occupied by the urban poor in Thailand.  The policy’s proponents argue that its participatory structure not only creates new spaces of participation for poor citizens but it also helps create more livable, sustainable cities.  Planners seek to make cities more sustainable by instructing residents in notions of “sufficiency economics,”—a theory of economic growth and sustainability promoted by the Thai King following Thailand’s 1997 economic implosion.  This paper examines the intersection between this notion of “sufficiency” and the politics of citizenship in Khon Kaen, arguing that sufficiency plays a complex and sometimes contradictory role in promoting development and environmental change.  On the one hand, planners and government officials attempt to promote sustainability by targeting the affective lives of poor citizens in order to reform their desires and encourage collectively oriented behavior.  By promoting moderation and seeking to train poor citizens to understand “enough,” planners argue that these communities will be stronger and ultimately more sustainable. Residents, on the other hand, incorporate sufficiency as a means of demonstrating their membership in the broader political community and their intentions to develop the city.  By employing an aesthetics of sufficiency in their community projects, residents demonstrate their status as legitimate members of the nation and make claims to long-term occupancy rights on the railway’s land. Even though this paper suggests that residents use sufficiency as a means of “redistributing the sensible” (Ranciere 2004) their claims to land and “rights to the city” remain tenuous.

Anthropologies of Conflict in a New Millennium
American Ethnological Society and Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Spring Conference 2013
April 11-13, 2013
Chicago

From the events of September 11 to the war in Iraq, from the Arab spring to Greek riots, from the invasion of Afghanistan to the occupation of Wall Street, the opening of the new millennium has witnessed a burst of new forms of conflict around the world. For anthropologists, these events have raised profound questions both about the nature of human conflict and about the place of our discipline within it. How should anthropologists understand the new forms of conflict that increasingly dominate the world stage? In what ways do we need to rethink our accustomed notions of power, of nation, of technology, and of the relationship between individual and group? And how do we situate ourselves, scientifically and morally, amid the contending groups whose cultures we study?

In April of 2013, the American Ethnological Society and the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology will explore these questions at our joint Spring Meeting in Chicago, Illinois. We invite proposals for papers, panels, workshops, and special events that interrogate the place of conflict in anthropological thought and practice. Possible subjects might include, but are not limited to:

• Anthropologists in conflict zones
• Meanings of power in the contemporary world
• The ethics of anthropological engagement with military authorities
• Law and violence
• The meanings of protest on the international stage
• Practices of conflict resolution, repair, and reconciliation
• The changing role of the nation-state
• Religion and power in contemporary conflicts
• The role of the legal process in times of conflict
• Conflict and the surveillance state
• Changing understandings of religious fundamentalism
• Anthropological ethics in a time of violence
• The role and influence of diaspora populations in conflict
• Ethnography of specific conflict arenas  – e.g., the Occupy movement, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, the Arab Spring, the European austerity revolts, the War on Terror, the Tea Party movement

As always, paper and panel proposals on topics unrelated to the meetings theme are also welcome.

Proposals for workshops and special events should be submitted through the online portal by January 18, 2013.

Proposals for panels and individual papers should be submitted through the online portal by January 25, 2013.

The online portal will be available mid-November 2012

For more information, please see the AES and APLA websites, or contact Program Chair Andrew Buckser at buckser@purdue.edu or the APLA representatives, Kimberley Coles and Elizabeth Meertz (kimberley_coles at redlands.edu and eemertz at wisc.edu)

COFFEE AND CONVERSATION AT THE APLA BUSINESS MEETING:

Featuring

CATHERINE BESTEMAN

(Colby College)

Co-editor with Hugh Gusterson of The Insecure American

APLA Business Meeting:

Saturday, November 17

12:15 to 1:30

All are welcome to join us for coffee and conversation at the APLA business meeting. We will award our student paper prize, conduct some additional APLA business, and will feature Catherine Besteman leading an informal discussion of the following questions:

• What forms can public anthropology take in the current political landscape?
• How can anthropology respond to public anxiety?
• What alternatives can anthropology suggest?

Catherine Besteman is Professor of Anthropology at Colby College, where she holds the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professorship. She is author or editor of The Insecure American (coedited with Hugh Gusterson, University of California Press, 2009), Transforming Cape Town (University of California Press, 2008 (Leeds Honor Book Award, Society for Urban, National, and Transnational Anthropology, 2009), Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back (University of California Press 2005, coedited with Hugh Gusterson), Violence: A Reader (Palgrave Press and New York University Press 2002), Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press 1999), and The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War (Westview Press and Haan Publishing 1996, edited with Lee V. Cassanelli).

There are only a few spots left (as of 7 October 2012), so please see the full announcement if you are interested in applying, or learning more.

This year, the five workshops are:

1. After “Studying Up”: Anthropologists and Elites, 40 Years Later
Faculty facilitators:  Douglas Holmes, SUNY-Binghamton; Tess Lea, University of Sydney
2. Language and Linguistic Analysis in Political and Legal Anthropology
Faculty facilitators:  John Conley, University of North Carolina School of Law; TBD

3. Using Documents and Archives in Ethnographic Research
Faculty facilitators:  Jane K. Cowan, University of Sussex; Kregg Hetherington, Dalhousie University

4. Governance, Jurisdiction, and the Politics of Scale
Faculty facilitators:  Matthew Hull, University of Michigan; Annelise Riles, Cornell University

5. Law, Property, and Infrastructure
Faculty facilitators:  Julian Brash, Montclair State University; Rosemary Coombe, York University

http://www.polaronline.org/